SCOTUS & DOMA: If They Strike It Down, It will Not Be the Victory Gay Marriage Advocates Are Seeking

From today’s arguments before the Court:

 

Kennedy said the Defense of Marriage Act appears to intrude on the power of states that have chosen to recognize same-sex marriages. When so many federal statutes are affected, “which in our society means that the federal government is intertwined with the citizens’ day-to-day life, you are at real risk of running in conflict with what has always been thought to be the essence of the state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody,” Kennedy said.

If the court does strike down part of DOMA, it would represent a victory for gay rights advocates. But it would be something short of the endorsement of gay marriage nationwide that some envisioned when the justices agreed in December to hear the federal case and the challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

http://news.yahoo.com/boost-gay-marriage-justices-us-law-210143944–politics.html

The commentary from the Justices today is different than yesterday’s when discussing Prop 8. From my perspective, gay couples should receive the federal benefits afforded to married couples if they are in a documented committed relationship, i.e., civil unions.

SCOTUS Already Ruled on the Definition of Marriage as One Man & One Woman in Murphy v Ramsey

from the FreeRepublic:

In Murphy v. Ramsey (1885) SCOTUS defined marriage as “the union of one man and one woman…” 3/27/2013 | Laissez-Faire Capitalist

Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 12:37:31 PM by Laissez-faire capitalist

In Murphy v. Ramsey, SCOTUS defined marriage as “The union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony.”

In Maynard v. Hill, SCOTUS spoke of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Remember, liberals, Stari Decisis….right? Chuck E. Cheese Schumer seems to like to invoke those words whenever it suits him.

Marriage should be redefined, and those that are against redefining it are bigots? Then why are liberals bigotted against consenting ADULT Polygamists? Marriage is about love and equality? Then why don’t liberals love consenting adult polygamists/polygamy and desire equality for them, too? We’re talking about adults here.

Why do liberals act as if they only want to redefine something so far and no further — but it never seems to end up that way?????

Liberals are NEVER done when it comes to changing/redefining things…..

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3001288/posts

Paris Erupts with Protests Against Gay Marriage Days before US Supreme Takes Up The Matter

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in a final protest in Paris against a bill to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption.

There were scuffles and police fired tear gas as the protest spilled over onto the Champs Elysees, the avenue which runs past the president’s palace.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said there had been dozens of arrests.

France’s Senate is due to debate the bill next month after it was passed by the lower house of parliament.

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party and its allies dominate both houses.

Opinion polls suggest a majority of French people still support gay marriage but their numbers have fallen in recent weeks.

for story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21918524

Like the US, France is Poised to Ignore the “Voice of the People” in Same-Sex Marriage Proposal

French leaders, once poised to pass a same-sex marriage bill, are meeting opposition to their efforts.

An estimated 350,000 proponents of marriage rallied near the Eiffel Tower last Sunday, urging the government to retain marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The protest was one of France’s largest in decades, according to news outlets.

A multi-faith coalition including Christians, Jews, and Muslims are protesting the move to redefine marriage.

The effort is a troubling move for the country, which is facing its own deteriorating marriage culture. Redefining marriage would intensify the confusion plaguing France over the purpose and public nature of marriage.

The rallying cries in France, much like in America, are turning the discussion to the needs of children, not just the desires of adults.

Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that is fundamental to society’s stability. Government—whether French or American—should not obscure the truth about marriage by accepting a revisionist view of marriage, which sees marriage as primarily about emotional bonds or legal privileges. In redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships, government would weaken marital norms, which would further delink childbearing from marriage and hurt spouses and children—especially the most vulnerable. It would deny a mother or father to a child as a matter of policy. Citizens would also lose more of their freedom of religion and conscience.

Sadly, reports indicate that the French government is ignoring the people’s voice

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/16/french-protest-in-favor-of-marriage/

To “Restore Marriage”, The Basic Premise Must Be Defined

Restoring Marriage Requires Knowing What It Is

Ryan T. Anderson

December 21, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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“The President’s Marriage Agenda for the Forgotten Sixty Percent,” despite the impression its title might give, was released earlier this week not by the Obama Administration but by the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. It is a timely, compelling, and important report, but it falls short in a basic way: It never once even attempts to define marriage.

You cannot advance a marriage agenda without knowing what marriage is and why it matters for public policy, as my co-authors and I argue in our new book, What Is Marriage?

I published a review of the report earlier this week:

The report rightly notes that “marriage is not merely a private arrangement; it is also a complex social institution.” But the report never says what this complex institution is, or why it ought to be governed by the standard marital norms of monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and a pledge of permanence—norms that many leading defenders of redefining marriage explicitly reject. Yet without these norms—and the intelligible basis that grounds them—marriage can’t do the work that the authors want it to do.

That is important work indeed, as the report explains. It helpfully documents the retreat from marriage afflicting today’s middle class and how fixing this “is the social challenge for our times.” While in the 1980s “only 13 percent of the children of moderately educated mothers were born outside of marriage,” today that figure has “risen to a whopping 44 percent.” Indeed, the majority of births to women under thirty “now occur outside of marriage.”

The report rightly recognizes the societal cost of the breakdown of marriage, arguing that as families fail to form and as children are born out of wedlock, the state has to fill in the void—the annual cost to taxpayers is around $112 billion. However, the various policy proposals in the report are undermined by the redefinition of marriage:

The report’s fourth recommendation, “End Anonymous Fatherhood,” notes that “the anonymous man who provided his sperm walks away with no obligation.” Although a relatively small percentage of parents “use sperm donation or similar technologies to get pregnant, the cultural power of the idea that it’s acceptable deliberately to create a fatherless child and for biological fathers to walk away from their children is real.”

The authors propose that the United States ban anonymity in sperm donation “and reinforce the consistent message that fathers matter.” But how does marriage policy reinforce that message if it redefines marriage to say that mothers and fathers—one of each—are optional for marriage? How does redefining marriage to include lesbian relationships not further incentivize the type of anonymous sperm donation and resulting fatherless children that the authors protest?

Marriage redefined and separated from the bearing and rearing of children not only lacks the sexual complementarity of spouses, but other characteristics of marriage—monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence—also become optional insofar as marriage becomes nothing more than any interpersonal relationship that consenting adults, be they two or ten in number, want it to be: sexual or platonic, sexually exclusive or open, temporary or permanent.

Some who see this logic, thinking that marriage has no form and serves no social purpose, conclude that the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.

Of course, children stand to lose the most from redefining marriage, as children born and raised outside marriage are six times more likely to experience poverty, and welfare spending will continue to skyrocket as the basic unit of civil society—the family—is weakened.

This highlights the central questions in this debate: what marriage is and why the state recognizes it. It’s not that the state shouldn’t achieve its basic purpose while obscuring what marriage is. Rather, it can’t. Only when policy gets the nature of marriage right do we reap the civil society benefits of recognizing marriage.

The future of our country, then, relies upon the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends upon citizens’ understanding of what it is and why it matters—and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage. Unfortunately, “The President’s Marriage Agenda” overlooks these questions. How successful can a “new conversationon marriage” be when its leaders can’t even say what marriage is?

To understand the arguments in depth, read my essay in its entirety at Public Discourse, or my new book What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, co-authored with Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George.

From http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/21/restoring-marriage-requires-knowing-what-it-is/

SCOTUS Poised to Take On Gay-Marriage Issue, In Narrow Terms

      While proponents of gay-marriage will frame any decision by the Supreme Court regarding marriage-equality (the PC term for Gay marriage) as a win, and a movement toward its full legalization, legal experts warn to the contrary. Of the ten cases that the Court can choose to hear during this session regarding this issue, the two that they are most like to take will be Windsor v. US, a Defense of Marriage Act case, and the California Proposition 8 case.

The Defense of Marriage Act

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, recently has been struck down by two federal appeals courts, which means the Supreme Court is all but obligated to take at least one of the cases to settle the dispute between Congress and the courts. The case thought most likely to be picked up by the justices is Windsor v. United States, which challenges DOMA, a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex married couples, even those in states that allow gay marriage.

The suit was brought by Edith Windsor, a resident of New York who paid $363,000 in estate taxes after her wife died because the federal government did not recognize their marriage. New York is one of nine states (and the District of Columbia) where gay marriage is legal, so Windsor argues that the federal government is discriminating against her by not recognizing her state-sanctioned marriage. (editor note: Ms. Windsor and her partner were married in Canada in 2007, but her partner died in 2009 in New York AFTER New York began recogonizing same sex marriages from other jurisdictions)

Windsor’s attorneys are not arguing, however, that marriage is a fundamental right that all Americans are entitled to, no matter their sexual orientation. And few experts expect the Supreme Court to make such a sweeping decision.

Proposition 8

Court watchers think the Supreme Court also will take up Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban. Voters passed Prop. 8 in 2008 months after the state’s high court had legalized same sex unions and thousands of gay Californians had already tied the knot. Two federal courts have struck down Prop. 8 as discriminatory, leaving the Supreme Court to render a final judgment

The Prop. 8 case differs from the DOMA case in one key respect:  In Prop. 8, the pro-gay marriage side is arguing that marriage is a fundamental right that should not be denied to people based on their sexual orientation. That means the Supreme Court, in theory, could issue a sweeping decision on Prop. 8 that legalizes gay marriage throughout the country and invalidates state gay marriage bans.

Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, thinks that’s unlikely. He says the justices will most likely wait for public opinion–which has just recently begun to swing in support of gay marriage–and state laws to coalesce around the issue before issuing a broad decision.

“The more this percolates, the easier it is to address this in the future,” Stone said.

         In 3 states, in this past election, the VOTERS decided to permit same-sex marriage. In more than 30 States, the VOTERS have voted to the contrary, disapproving of the redifining of marriage. And the Courts have forced same-sex marriage on its citizens, and in some cases, like the Prop 8, did so AFTER the vote of the people. This issue will continue to be debated,and as Pastor Rick Warren has said, it is a welcomed debate if it is done so in the right forum and the right demeanor.

for article:http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/primer-major-gay-marriage-cases-pending-supreme-court-210914785–election.html

Congrats to All Who Supported the 1st Amendment @ Chick-Fil-A

Despite the attempts of ABC, CBS, and NBC to frame yesterday’s “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” as support for anti-same-sex marriage, Americans across the country packed the company’s 1600 stores to show their support for Dan Cathy’s freedom of speech. Cathy is the CEO of the privately-held, family owned fast food organization, and his support of “traditional marriage and family values” sparked a firestorm that has several high profile Mayors making threats to keep the company from any future expansions in their areas, a chilling thought that borders on fascism.

Pictures of long lines and great service were plastered on every social media.

At my Chick-Fil-A, the staff had been busy all day, and all managers were on hand to make sure everything went great.

This was not a protest against same-sex marriage, and anyone who tried to frame it as such just didn’t get it. It was heartening to even hear a few gay people being interviewed showing their support for Mr. Cathy’s freedom of speech. I am sure there were many, though we know the media will not permit it to be framed in that way.

So tomorrow, members of the LGBT community have called for a “kiss in”, encouraging same-sex couples to express their freedom of speech by kissing each other in Chick-Fil-A. While those who heed this call would be classified as those who “don’t get it”, thinking this was about marriage equality, I strongly support THEIR RIGHT to exercise their freedom of speech. A pastor on TV today said he debated with a lesbian pastor last night on a radio show about the Chick-Fil-A controversy, and to make his point about the freedom of speech issue and the “government intrusion” being intimidated by the likes of Rahm Emannuel, he told this woman that if she wanted to build a church and the city said “no way” because of her values or beliefs, he would stand with HER to defend her right to build her church.

And that is tolerance.

Speaking of Hunger Games and Marriage Equality, Show Your Support for Dan Cathy and Join Us @ Chick-Fil-A on 8/1/12

Hunger, or being hungry, and deciding what to eat—- that is my version of the Hunger Games!!

So I am hoping to be plenty hungry tomorrow, and urge everyone to show your support for Dan Cathy and Chick-Fil-A tomorrow by visiting one of his 1600 stores.

I urge our friends in the LGBT community to join as well. Why?

     Because this is not a marriage equality issue, or a gay rights issue!!

This is about freedom of speech………………… Mr. Cathy was asked a question and voiced his opinion, his beliefs.

For doing that, at least three Mayors have stated that they will use their political agendas to force Mr. Cathy to Change his views” or not be allowed to operate his businesses in their cities.

We must all understand that this is a very “slippery slope” that Chicago’s Ward leader and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is travelling upon. The very idea that a business will be granted a building permit, a Health department license, a certificate of occupancy, or any other Governmental license based upon the ideology of the management of the organization is patently offensive ti the very nature of the free enterprise system, our basic civil rights, and the very core of our freedoms.

Biden Gay Marriage Remarks Reflect the Quandry of Obama

Ever since Vice President Joe Biden appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday and described his own journey to accepting gay marriage, President Barack Obama’s campaign has been insisting that Biden’s comments are “entirely consistent” with Obama’s own position on the issue. The vice president’s office also walked back the statements, clarifying that Biden was saying that gay married couples in states that allow it should have the same rights as straight married couples.

The vice president’s exact words to David Gregory were: “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women  marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are  entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil  liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction—beyond  that.” (See his full comments here.)

Some of the top gay rights advocacy leaders in the country are skeptical, however, that Biden wasn’t advocating the legalization of gay marriage in full. Biden was endorsing the legal right for same-sex couples to marry, they say, something that Obama has stopped short of doing as president. And the effort to walk back Biden’s comments could backfire.

The president says he supports civil unions but not civil marriage for same-sex couples, although he has indicated that his views are “evolving.” (As a state senator, he supported gay marriage.)

Some advocates told Yahoo News that Obama surrogates endorsing gay marriage is a way for the campaign to “wink” at second-term support for the policy without taking the political risk of outright embracing gay marriage in an election year. Mitt Romney has said he would pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and appoint judges who oppose gay marriage, placing himself far to the right of Obama, who helped end the military’s ban on openly gay service and abandoned the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. But despite this gulf, both candidates oppose gay marriage—an uncomfortable fact when it comes to rallying the Democratic base or fundraising from passionately pro-gay rights donors.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/obama-gay-marriage-balancing-act-gets-awkward-182425913.html

Working on the Base: Obama Seeks Overturning DOMA

Despite the fact that twenty-six states have laws or a part of their Constitution that define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and despite the fact that the only states where same-sex marriage is deemed legal are where it has been done by the Legislatures or court, and despite the fact that in EVERY STATE where the measure has been placed on the ballot for the vote of the people the idea of same-sex marriage has been rejected, the Obama Administration is weighing in that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) should be overturned.

Before the “homophobe” comments begin, let me reiterate a point I have made many times on this blog: being opposed to the idea of gay marriage does not mean I hate gays. It does not mean that gays should be discriminated against.

Yet, the argument goes that by not permitting gays to marry discriminates against them. It denies them certain rights that married couples enjoy. I have said repeatedly that with the exception of tax benefits and social security benefits, every other right or benefit can be afforded to a same-sex couple by legal and enforceable means.

So why is the President pushing this issue now? Why didn’t the POTUS push this at the same time he pushed for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Is this exactly as it appears… a calculated political move?

My question to those who support the change in the definition of marriage– if we make the change to same-sex marriage, where do we draw the line when the polygamists want it changed to accomodate them, etc?